


Jack Knew

by twowritehands



Category: While You Were Sleeping (1995)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Curses, F/M, Humor, Jack-Centric, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: Jack's side of the story, the morning they met.
Relationships: Jack Callaghan/Lucy Moderatz
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Jack Knew

_Two things I remember about my childhood?_

_Well, I don't remember it bein' black and white like this but… ok._

_First, I remember playing in my parents' store, where we had all of the estate furniture on display. I always liked the wooden stuff, especially if it wasn't painted to hide the natural grain of the wood. I would sit and look at the pieces and imagine how it was pieced together… it seemed like magic._

_But probably the best memories were how Mom and Dad, and Saul and his wife, would all sit around and talk and talk and talk, but they would also make each other laugh. Didn't matter what they were doing, they were talking and laughing. So from a very young age, I had the understanding that when you grow up, you're supposed to marry someone that makes you laugh so that you aren't bored out of your mind as you do all the grown up stuff like washing dishes and polishing furniture._

_Well… when I first saw her, it was late and I was coming into my parents house after a ten hour drive from a furniture delivery out of state. And there she was, asleep on my mom's couch. I looked at her, and I knew two things instantly._

_One: that life would never be the same. And two: that Curses--and by extension, witches--are real._

_To explain, we have to back up to my childhood again. About twenty two years...._

_Oh, black and white again, I see. Okay._

_So I was twelve. Peter was fourteen. Some old lady had died and her house was wall to wall heavy oak furniture with gold inlay. Very fancy, very expensive._ Veerryy _hard to move. I hated it, and vowed that when I was a grown up, I wouldn't move other people's junk for a living._

_Miss Gianna had just passed away, but her twin sister was still alive, and the family was selling the furniture out of necessity. The old lady openly wept as Dad, Peter and I moved in and out of her home, carrying away pieces of it with every pass. This was another part of the job I hated. Because it was always a dead person's stuff. And there was always someone who loved that person there, watching us snatch it all away._

_Anyway, I got tired, hungry and irritable, because I wasn't being allowed to play that summer like my classmates, so I tried to go on strike. It might have worked better if I made picket signs and actually_ told _someone that I was on strike._

_I was meant to be rounding up potted plant stands (the inventory said there were, like, ten of them and they were these heavy ugly porcelain things. I hated them.) So instead I slipped away up some stairs to the attic._

_I poked around through dusty boxes of distinctly uninteresting things like books and papers for about half an hour before I got caught by this older woman, a relative I think, of the lady who was crying downstairs. She was a scary woman. The only name I was ever given for her was Miss Anne._

_When she found me she screamed, "Get down here this instant or I'll put a curse on you!"_

_And I said, "Curses aren't real!"_

_And she said, "Yes they are, and bad boys get the worst curses."_

_I flat out told her that she was nuts. So she flung her hand at me and said something in what I would later tell myself must have been Serbian or something like that, though at the time I_ definitely _thought it was the language demons speak._

_"There. You are cursed." She said._

_I told her I wasn't. She moved in close to me suddenly, a great swooping motion until her face was right in mine. (I don't know why her eyes are in color now when everything else is still black and white.)_

_She says to me, "You will know you have met your one true love the very moment that you lay eyes upon her!"_

_And like the little snot that I was, I puffed up and said, "That's not a very good curse!" And ran away to find Peter and Dad._

_So, uh, now we're caught up. Because, you see, for twenty two years, I didn't believe in that curse. But then Mary says, "She's Peter's fiance," and I suddenly_ did _believe._

_Ho, boy, did I believe._

_Because that crazy old woman was right. I_ did _know. The_ instant _I laid my eyes on her. I knew! It was like the saw blade skipped off the neatly penciled line on the board I was cutting._

_The kicker was that I hadn't even gotten a good look at her. She was sleeping on a couch with her back to me, in a dark room lit by a Christmas tree. All I could see was her dark hair and small shoulders, maybe the swoop of her waist._

_How was that enough to go on? I can't explain it! Somehow… it just was._

Jack woke up early and tiptoed in socked feet downstairs. Peter’s fiance, the intriguing Lucy, was still asleep on the couch. But she had turned herself and now he could see her face. It was a pale, pointed face, almost elf-like and totally adorable. _Lucy_ , he thought with a smile. Then he almost immediately looked away and left the room. Feeling like a creep.

She was Peter’s fiance.

Why didn’t that sit right with him? He went quietly into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee, still caught up in the zing that had gone through him head to toe when he’d first seen her little frame curled on the couch. It hadn’t been physical so much as… well, he didn’t know what to call it.

_You will know you have met your one true love the moment you lay eyes upon her._

Why that old memory had been in the back of his mind all night, he didn't know. It was silly. Curses were not real. Witches didn't exist. He had been a little boy trespassing and that woman was a crazy lady who was just trying to scare him.

Right?

How could the zing he had felt be love when all he'd seen was a woman with dark hair, and a baggy sweater, asleep on a sofa?

That was it. That was why he couldn't stop thinking about her. Not because of magic or witches or curses. Because of Peter. And what Jack knew about his brother.

Brunette, baggy sweater, asleep on the sofa.

Not a single one of those facts lined up with Peter’s tastes. Peter liked blonds. Blondes that wore silky form-fitting things. Blondes that slept _in beds_. This was a five bedroom house and only three of the rooms were currently occupied by his parents, Mary and Grandma. So why wasn’t this woman upstairs in Peter’s old bedroom?

Was she… conscientious? Rather than have Ma drag out fresh linen to do up a bed that even Peter hadn’t slept in for years (always staying nearby in a hotel for the holidays because his girlfriends preferred it that way) had she insisted a throw blanket on the couch would be enough?

That was it. That was all it was. He was obsessing over her because of the disconnect between Peter's type and what he saw. It wasn't a bolt from the blue. It wasn't true love. It was nothing but the intrigue of the situation. Since when did Peter have a fiance? A brunette fiance? A petite, brunette fiance that would do something as selfless and dangerous as jump onto the tracks to pull him out of the way of a train?

Jack sipped his coffee and quietly passed by the living room again. She was still there. Still asleep.

He went out into the cold to fetch the paper and lingered out there, breathing in the frigid air, trying to feel centered.

 _You’re going to love her, she’s great_ , Mary had said. And that was weird, wasn’t it? Mary never liked Peter’s girlfriends. And yet she did, while somehow knowing that Jack would like her, too? No, not like, _love_. Mary said love. What could possibly be so wonderful about this woman that Mary wouldn’t have a doubt in her mind that Jack would enjoy meeting her?

His imagination had no trouble filling in the details. If Mary liked her, she was fun without talking down to her like she was a baby. If Mary said she was great, then she wore clothes that Mary would want to wear rather than the expensive trophy wife-stuff Peter’s women usually wore. And if Mary was sure Jack would like her, then that meant she had a job, varied interests, and she could hold an actually interesting conversation.

Where would Peter have found a girl as great as that?

Jack crept back into the house. Lucy was still sleeping, an arm flung over her head. Lightly snoring. He grinned. The living room was out of bounds, but rather than go to the dining room, or the TV room, or the breakfast nook to have his coffee and read the paper, he went to the stairs. He picked a spot where he couldn’t see into the room, but where he would definitely catch her as she left it. Too many questions had kept him up all night. He wanted to meet her, officially, as soon as possible.

He wanted, if possible, to pop the bubble.

He had spent all night dreaming up a woman that could charm his parents and Mary, a woman that would jump on tracks to save her man, a woman that would sleep on a couch. He’d tossed and turned and thought of that stupid curse, and he was now at a point were he wanted nothing more than reality. Cold, hard reality.

Just because Mary said Lucy was great didn’t mean she was actually great. It meant she saved Peter’s life and had the talent to charm thirteen year old girls.

What did Jack actually _know_ about Lucy so far? She was gorgeous, no question, but she was Peter’s finance. And that said plenty even if it didn’t seem like it did.

Peter’s fiance meant Peter’s girlfriend, which meant she was rich or at least, only interested in men who were rich.

 _That’s not fair_ , he sighed, shaking his head at himself. If Lucy was interested in Peter, it wasn’t _only_ because he was rich. Peter was charming, successful, educated and he loved sports. There was plenty for someone to like, even love, despite his brother's many character flaws.

Just because every other woman Peter ever brought home was materialistic and morally ambiguous did not mean that this one was. And she _had_ risked her own life to save Peter, which said a lot... Couldn't Peter be just as likely to strike gold as any other man?

So, a very confused Jack lurked on the stairs, waiting to see if he was crazy, or if Peter was lucky, and witches were real.

When Lucy finally came creeping out of the room, headed for the front door in an obvious escape plan, Jack grinned. He croaked out a good morning and she leapt out of her skin. 

"Good morning. Jack."

Something fluttered in his chest. "Uh I guess I don't remember meeting you."

"That's because you haven't." The tilt of her head and her smile were both so cute, Jack lost his breath.

As the conversation went on, he began to see a little of who she was. Soft spoken, and gentle. A quick, sweetheart smile and kind, sincere eyes. And for some reason she seemed as nervous as Jack felt. He fought a knot growing in his stomach as he welcomed her to the family, and then he couldn't help himself from peeking out of the blinds to watch her climb into the cab.

She was absolutely nothing like Peter’s usual type, and yet she _was_ Peter’s fiance. So it was as bad as he had feared.

"Good curse," he murmured.

**Author's Note:**

> We are tempted to keep going with this. Just go through the whole movie with this angle. Every time he isn't on screen, Jack is trying to find a way to break the curse or something haha


End file.
